Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising/Evol/Sister vs Pixies - Come On Pilgrim/Surfer Rosa/Doolittle

See also Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth/Confusion Is Sex/ Sonic-Death Sonic-Youth Live vs Swans - Filth/Cop/Greed

Sonic Youth and it isn't close.

Pixies captured a lot of hearts this side of the pond; they’d run away with this if Irish and Brits were the only ones voting.

That's a tough one. Gonna need to sit with this for a bit.

and I do like Pixies, just never wanna listen to them.

SY by a country mile.

SY by millions and millions

^^

That’s two ILM polls in a row where I voted for SY

i was a huuuge pixies fan for the first two records but i've gotta say, there were a couple of tracks on doolittle that sowed the tiny seeds of contempt for them in my heart

i remember travelling up from sleepy old basingstoke with my mates to see pixies + throwing muses (+ the junior manson slags!) in london in 1988-ish and i was super excited standing in the queue because it was the first time in my life i'd ever seen actual people wearing sonic youth t-shirts :)

awwww <3

first time I heard Pixies I thought they were the Violent Femmes going electric

bad moon rising is my least favorite of these, but sister is my very favorite!

i would probably be betraying my teenaged self if i voted against pixies tho. been a while since i put on come on pilgrim. "caribou" is still one of the first songs i play on the rare occasions when i pick up a guitar

I’m kinda confused by the random 3 run release SY selection. Like, if you’re going to do the debut EP and first 2 Pixies records I would think you’d have done SY’s debut EP, Confusion is Sex, Bad Moon Rising.

Nm, didn’t see the the note at top.

These days SY are pole stars in my firmament, but back in the day the early Pixies albums were like a firecracker going off under my hicksville ass, they probably changed my outlook more. It’s a pity they pissed it away by reuniting.
Also, co-sign on being unable to resist picking out “Caribou” on any guitar.

Kim vs Kim = tie
Charles vs Thurston = charles
Joey vs Lee = tie
David vs Bob = bob

I missed my window to care about the Pixies. When Surfer Rosa came out I was listening to Big Black and Ministry and Slayer and the Butthole Surfers and Public Enemy and Ice-T. And honestly I didn't even know they had three more albums after that. I saw them live in December 1990 (opening for Jane's Addiction) and they didn't even register.

xp pfffft

Pixies possibly the single most overrated band of the 80s imo

yeah I was a smidge too old for The Pixies, was already a total SY fanatic by 1986

like, they are not even remotely in the same league here

https://i.imgur.com/86oxlll.jpeg

The Kims transcend both bands

i went pixies but i love both. i think if it was evol/sister/daydream i would have gone SY

xxp ok lol fair

i think if it was evol/sister/daydream i would have gone SY

I'll go SY anyway but agree, having this start at bad moon makes this closer than you'd expect

HEY NOW

that is my holy trinity

amazed so many ppl are saying “not even close”. one of these albums is doolittle ffs

pixies changed my life and taste so i’m going with them

I believe my BMR love has been well documented on this board, it is my fave

sorry ivy, I have never been moved by anything other than "Gigantic" (I do love The Breeders, but yeah SY changed my life so them)

amazed so many ppl are saying “not even close”. one of these albums is doolittle ffs

― ivy., Tuesday, October 8, 2024

hi, I'm one of them! Sister meant way more to me.

Sonic Youth and it isn't close.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 4:35 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglinkSY by a country mile.

― stirmonster, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:01 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

SY by millions and millions

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^

― go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^^^^^^^^^

Doolittle's great but come on this isn't even a question

SY, and the reason it's not even close is because I've never listened to a Pixies

I love both bands, but SY are handicapped by the inclusion of Bad Moon Rising, which has never clicked with me at all. So this is pretty easily Pixies for me.

Listened to all of these back in the day but BMR is the only one I've revisited in the past 30 years.

also unpopular opinion here (maybe everywhere???) but for me ‘90s sy is mostly preferable to ‘80s

It isn't

And 2000s is best.

“ I missed my window to care about the Pixies.”

By the time I understood who Pixies were I was already a Nirvana fan, and that was as doing it for me.

I vividly remember finally hearing a best of in some friend’s dorm room and being like “oh, that’s what everyone is going on about! I kinda get it!”

Then I never much listened to Pixies again.

Also BMR is a top five SY album for me

Sonic Youth and it isn't close.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 4:35 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglinkSY by a country mile.

― stirmonster, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:01 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

SY by millions and millions

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^

― go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^^^^^^^^^

Doolittle's great but come on this isn't even a question

― Deflatormouse, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 8:06 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'd rather play sister 3 times than listen to any pixies album all the way through

Will Smith is wholly irrelevant, and it's not like he's been calling good games either. Just put in Barnes.

god this is just as insane as the black flag poll to me

BMR is the best. Agree with sleeve: “Gigantic” is great, everything else is indifferent. Not close is right.

Austin Barnes could be an Richard Edson stand in

I nearly cracked my screen to smash the SY button.

I nearly cracked my screen to smash the SY button.

Steve Shasta wrong thread

You couldn’t pay me to see Pixies in 2024; I would walk 50 miles to see SY in 2024; how badly did Frank Black mess up his halcyon years? utterly

Voting Pixies, *poot*, no contest. Before the fall

I guess it's because Frank Black comes across as such a prick

I like the Pixies, just not as much as those SY albums.

i think the pixies just wore out a lot of goodwill they'd banked up. but their first four albums are so great

i thought we were polling albums and not if bands did or didn't wear out their goodwill

Like, if I'm going whole catalog, this is SY in a walk. But I cannot deny how massive of an effect those first 3 Pixies releases were for me, even though I'd probably throw on one of BMR, EVOL or Sister before any of those Pixies albums these days.

pixies were awesome. i listened to those albums a zillion times. never saw them live. people i knew always told me they were kinda stiff and boring live. that they just did rote versions of their songs. so i never made an attempt to see them. and i loved the first two breeders albums. and i bought the first two frank black albums and barely played them. and that was it for me. so my memories of pixies were mostly untarnished all these years. i ignored any latter-day stuff. i think frank black came in my store once and i didn't even recognize him. he lives in amherst. i only thought of it after the fact because of the name on his credit card.

i loved all the pixies singles too. all the b-sides. they were a cool band! and fun.

I guess it's because Frank Black comes across as such a prick

― one by one the wombles are dying (Matt #2), Wednesday, October 9, 2024 2:40 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how does thurston moore come across?

yeah, lol. i have a half dozen stories from friends/associates that had run-ins w/ Thurston and Kim during my 00s going to college in W. Mass and not a single one put them in a charitable light.

we should poll indie band alpha dickheads some time. black vs moore vs byrne vs mascis vs malkmus etc. who would be the worst to be in a band with.

thurston has always been nice to me. but i'm really cool so that helps. :)

j. is definitely a tough nut to crack but if you just brought up some weird vintage guitar pedal to him he'd be your best friend.

vs Corgan vs farrell
xp

xp owning a good record shop probably gets you in their good graces rather quickly :)

I only met Moore once, at a Peter Brötzmann show at Tonic, but he was nice enough. Just a tall free jazz nerd. I've also only ever seen Henry Rollins' dorky side, at least offstage.

i somehow ended up in a backstage room alone with kim once when bunnybrains were opening for SY in the early 90s and i was completely nervous and uncomfortable so just to say something i lied and said i really liked the harry crews album and then i ran.

but everyone i know around here who knows her like nace will tell you that she is super-nice and normal but also can just be super-shy around people she doesn't know and this can come across as frosty to people.

I feel like the Pixies did a lot of damage to their own rep with the neverending reunion tours and the terrible Indie Cindy album. I will say that I've found each successive reunion album to be better than the previous (while still none a patch on the original run), but it seems like their overall reputation took a nosedive in the 2010s.

I wonder where it would be if they would have just ended it after that first 2004 reunion tour (which I thought was great!).

(wait I have to amend that post, I forgot about Doggerel which wasn't great and ended the trend of steadily improving reunion albums)

what if they had made two or three more albums at the height of grunge that included kim's breeders stuff. they would have been huuuuugemongous. probably.

i had an absolute blast seeing them during their initial reunion run. playing at UMass with Mission of Burma opening!

Yeah, I had a lot of fun at the Chicago stop on that tour, but probably would have been extra cool to see "UMass" in UMass.

"Bam Thwok" deluxe reissue due soo I would assume

*soon

I like Frank Black/Black Francis solo albums better than any I’ve heard by SY members.

Frank Black's first solo album is my favorite thing he ever did, including with the Pixies.

That's not an opinion I've seen before

I bought it after TLM, its precursor. I had to get used to Doolittle and Surfer Rosa.

I remember when it came out and the UK critics seemed disappointed which I couldn't understand but then again they didn't seem to care for TLM and I thought that was a great album. It was the only Pixies album I got when it first came out.

I wish I had better words to describe it all. Surfer Rosa/Pilgrim are off-balance and careening, Bossanova/Doolittle feel like they're bargaining for classic status (and win their case), TLM and FB is when Black started to play it safer (and it worked), and by Teenager Of The Year (which I still love, but is where I get off the train) the songs were mostly transparent jokes, instead of "secret jokes". "Vamos a jugar por la playa" as a shouted chorus will always hit me harder than rhyming "abstract house" with "abstract mouse"

I feel like Sonic Youth was just starting to hit their stride with Sister while the Pixies were at full speed right out the gate on Pilgrim. I was square in the middle of the crowd mentioned above that discovered both bands with the Doolittle & Daydream Nation releases and I didn't really feel the need to go backwards into Sonic Youth's catalog, but in 1989, I needed to hear and loved everything that the Pixies did. Sonic Youth grew on me in the 90's as the Pixies disintegrated, but this poll is a sprint not marathon.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I respect the arguments for SY and might agree on aesthetic grounds but I definitely have listened to those 3 Pixies albums more than those 3 SY albums.

I think SY will win this easily

Pixies >>>>>

Pixies is the classic case of a band that was underrated for so long that people forgot to stop boosting them long after they swung to overrated, and then there was a predictable backlash.

Those first 3 releases are still amazing (even if they're just spreading the best songs from The Purple Tape demo across 3 albums).

Re: Sonic Youth, I didn't truly vibe with them until Murray Street, and yeah, the vocals have always been a hurdle for me.

even if they're just spreading the best songs from The Purple Tape demo across 3 albums

Eh, as late as "1984" Van Halen was still mining their original demos for material.

I had a hip friend in 9th grade (1989) that made me a copy of "Surfer Rosa" from his LP. He put a bunch of other stuff on the cassette, maybe the entirety of "Come On Pilgrim," but either by design or more likely lack of space - or possibly both - left off "Where is My Mind?" So I didn't hear that one until much later, when I replaced my cassette copy with that two-fer CD version. Ironic, given its current ubiquity.

He also made me a cassette of "Daydream Nation" around the same time, and filled up the rest of the tape with, like, Amphetamine Reptile stuff. I think I still have it somewhere, I should investigate!

Evol and Sister might both be in my top 100. I would had added Daydream as the 3rd. Love Bad Moon, but I will put it on when I'm in the mood for their "earlier stuff"

Love Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa, and probably another 20 Pixies songs, but SY is solidly in my DNA

Re: Sonic Youth, I didn't truly vibe with them until Murray Street, and yeah, the vocals have always been a hurdle for me.

― enochroot, Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Even with three distinct singer?

Eh, as late as "1984" 2012 Van Halen was still mining their original demos for material.

XP, i always liked Lee vocals best, but that seems like a boring answer, so i didn't mention that.
Anyway, none of those 3 singers could do what Black Francis does on "Caribou".

who is gonna win?

sy will win

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Looks like every ilxor ever came out to play for this one

i agree with ivy here.

SY mean way more to me than the Pixies overall, but these Pixies albums mean more to me than these SY albums (I may be an unreliable luddite though, because I seem to underrate Sister compared to most SY fans)

I really need to revisit the Pixies’ discography sometime. After hearing so many people praise them like crazy I finally heard it all in like the mid-00s or thereabouts and it was just… okay. “Here Comes Your Man” is good.

xp - that was my exact sentiment when voting. EVOL was massive for me but for whatever reason Sister, Daydream, etc. never did much for me. I know I could pick 3 non sequential SY albums that would immediately top that Pixies run, though.

For me these records are firmly associated with high school in such a way that they are all: (i) about equally important -- I seemed to get more mileage out of BMR than some; (ii) ridiculously well etched into my memory, as juvenile investments in expensive physical discs tended to be; and also (iii) things that I virtually never think to return to in the 21st century!

If I'd seen the thread earlier I may have finally them dragged them out for a painstaking week of reevaluation, etc, and... possibly still declared it a tie lol.

It was a hard one! Sonic Youth is cooler and has a richer career/discography, but those Pixies albums hit me really hard in high school.

nice turn out, closer than expected from looking at posts above.

Whoa what a turnout. Closer result than I thought it would be judging by the posts.